ACM has announced the winners of two awards whose recipients set the stage for advances in computing that influenced practitioners, researchers, educators and policymakers throughout the world. William Wulf of the University of Virginia and Kelly Gotlieb of the University of Toronto touched a broad range of computer disciplines with their focus on building information infrastructures, promoting recognition of innovation and achievement, and initiating educational and funding opportunities to sustain the growth of computational thinking. ACM also announced the winner of the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, Seth Cooper of the University of Washington, for his research on video games to solve scientific problems. Wulf, Gotlieb, and Cooper will be honored at the ACM Awards Banquet on June 16 in San Francisco, California.

The awards include:

The Distinguished Service Award to William A. Wulf for distinguished service as a leader of the National Science Foundation's Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directorate, and as president of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

The Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award to Calvin C. (Kelly) Gotlieb as the leading light of ACM Awards committee. During his 20-year stewardship, as chair and then co-chair with James Horning of the ACM Awards Committee, Gotlieb helped define the program and raise its prestige and recognition worldwide, allowing ACM to play a major role in promoting excellence and achievement across the computing community.

The Doctoral Dissertation Award to Seth Cooper for his dissertation "A Framework for Scientific Discovery through Video Games." Cooper, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, explores how the video game environment can be used for solving difficult scientific problems.

Honorable Mention winner Aleksander Madry, nominated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his dissertation "From Graphs to Matrices, and Back: New Techniques for Graph Algorithms."

Honorable Mention winner David Steurer, nominated by Princeton University for his dissertation "On the Complexity of Unique Games and Graph Expansion."